Walking by Flashlight

While rummaging through my phone, I rediscovered my notes from a Maria Schneider lecture a few years ago. Maria Schneider is one of New York City’s leading jazz composers and big band leaders. Her music has pioneered a new wave of jazz music. 

One of my favorite pieces of hers is “Walking By Flashlight.” The Ted Kooser poem of the same name inspired it: 

Walking by flashlight

at six in the morning,

my circle of light on the gravel

swinging side to side,

coyote, raccoon, field mouse, sparrow,

each watching from darkness

this man with the moon on a leash.

Kooser wrote this poem and many others as he battled cancer. He later collected them into a book called Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison. Here’s a recording of Schneider’s “Walking by Flashlight.” It captures the poem with perfect simplicity and depth. 

Her lessons on composing and creating art directly applied to my magic and performing career. I could tell she knew how the minds of creatives are hopelessly cluttered rooms. We long to create beauty and harness chaos but struggle to convert daydreams into action. Her practical tips helped me stay grounded without losing motivation.

I took a few phrases that inspired me from the lecture and wrote my reflections on them. I encourage you to do the same and see where it leads you. 

• “Keep enthusiasm up by facing fear.”

• “Be as good as you can be at the thing you wanna do.”

• “Reconnect with REAL life. Turn off the phone. Enjoy art and nature and the joyous things that have nothing to do with anything.”

• “When I am writing music, I resist the temptation to make it about me. That said, I want a nugget of my personality in it.” 

• “Love. Wish. Those private, silly dreams have power.”

Keep walking, friends.